TOOLS OF IGNORANCE

“[the term] tools of ignorance...was meant to be ironic, contrasting the intelligence needed by a catcher to handle the duties of the position with the foolishness needed to play

The Festival of Convictions

5781     not moved to ceremony but moved
by the ground rejecting this nonsense   windows etc.
this very hill’s lack of integrity and possibly imminent dying

Let them do the majority of the talking. Laugh at their jokes. Ask them about their motorcycle, their new car, their recent trip to the Maldives.

An absorbed sound

There was the night where the snow was quieter than usual
& your car wouldn’t start, so we stood under concrete

steeples to wait for the tow truck until your last hand

She gives me a pocketknife. It has an ergonomic handle with smartly placed finger notches, a nice stainless-steel blade that folds up, a sturdy, low-riding pocket clip—perfect for those inconvenient moments you need to cut something loose.

Times the Dog Looks for God

Sun is too hot
Sun is too cold
Fire alarm

Balsamic Moon

Lightning in remembered spaces
going dormant
Shade avoidance and dashboard doubles

Feeling

By late August, Mary-Beth was sweating on her front porch swing, a bottle of Budweiser resting on the table her daughter Madison gave her for Mother’s Day a decade earlier. Mary-Beth had been watching

la tienda, or, the earth, fertile with nettles and

vegetables, bringing forth these meager

cypresses, this black damp that stains the

walls 

1.

words fall off the curl of nothing

I

I have made my decision: I am going to set myself on fire.

don’t answer that

another quar poem

in the sixth month
i want to play skee ball
and put it in my mouth after.
i don’t know if my mouth
is big enough. it’s been so long.
which is bigger, the

All blue awnings

man stands for myriad of anonymous nouns
something like far off voice
presumably an empty mountain becoming his own
invention, able to stand by itself (i.e. come where I am)
is

It only took Kyle a few days to make his confession about the other woman. It took nine months for him to tell me he couldn’t ride a bike.

We preened our signatures in the cheerful attic, Owen’s royal insignia and my fallen few ants.

hints on health

you touched my skin
in the crowded afternoon
my blood like a bloom
warm and erected

our bodies are useless
in winter
my need for excess
diminishes to the pursuit
of damp

They said that Xianrenzhang took your heart because she didn’t have her own. She was looking for one that was just the right size, not too big and not too small, that she could slot into the cavern in her chest.

sadness dies badly like a waiting room plant

every body is mostly water
and will still only sink or float

it’s so maddening
it takes me two hours to finish
an apple

sometimes the human in

Confession 8: Your first semester at community college was supposed to be a fresh start. 

Hector loved, loved, loved having a black friend, but he could never admit it.

crazy horse

half full heavy
whipping cream in their drywall construct
see me mob hammer ?
smack dab middle of july
i ask and clam up

that thunder is new to me
racking up the bill
instead

The thing about mason jars is that you can stuff them with anything you want: pasta, beans, ashes.

Britney’s People

Britney is a crystal swan born from a cave where they manufacture crystal swans. Britney’s People are her protectors. No people are as important as Britney’s People because it is

Sometimes I imagine I’ll get a long email from her, explaining why, when a family reunion stopped her from coming on the trip, she gave up on our friendship. Did I somehow offend her?

What am I doing on a train to Philadelphia?

Do you know how to leave this Earth? Because I really need to leave this Earth tonight. Jettison my skin. Supernova in a brilliant burst.

Fragrance

I never lost what I had out of eye    the piano minded surplus or acheless weather    what ever the
          night still oily with a personality is          there is no sense         

They were goldfish, and not even the pretty kind: they weren’t even really yellow, more like the color of the roots of your teeth, more like the color of a pus-glazed mosquito bite.